


Halcyon

by AliceInSomewhereland



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, just a dash of raven reyes, minty if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 11:16:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3445082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceInSomewhereland/pseuds/AliceInSomewhereland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time she sees the sea in person, she can’t quite catch her breath. It’s almost like being in space, she thinks, to be so small, so insignificant, in the face of something so incomprehensibly huge. The waves are gentle, rolling, rushing in and out and in and out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halcyon

_i._

Twilight has quickly given way to night as the search party trudges through the gates of Camp Jaha. The sky is clouded, and rain has begun to fall in big, fat droplets. It’s only a drizzle, but very soon it’ll be an all out downpour.

None of the group seem to notice nor, indeed, care, as the somber-faced survivors of the Ark come to watch them go, lining the walk to the Council Chambers like a path to reckoning. They whisper in hushed voices about how the search party had, yet again, returned empty-handed.

Bellamy Blake, at the head of the pack, barely notices; instead, there is only white noise. A heaviness settled into his limbs on the long walk home, and there’s a bitterness on his tongue. It tastes like denial. He is numb, straight to the bone, like he was back in that damn mountain, hanging upside down once again to wait for a slow and medicated death.

All that he knows anymore is the small object in his hand, much heavier than he remembers from the last time. It weighs him down like his memories, has grown warm in his grasp. He pretends the warmth is hers, and convinces himself it makes him feel better, but really it only hurts.

He enters the Ark, walking mechanically, trying to keep his face impassive, trying to be strong.

It’s like she knows before he can even open his mouth, from his face alone.

 _Damnit_. 

Abby Griffin, their great and powerful Chancellor, at odds for so long now with her daughter, collapses into the arms of Marcus Kane, wailing pitifully, gasping for air and grasping for anything solid.

Bellamy steps forward, prying her hand from its purchase on Kane’s jacket as he tries to comfort her, pressing the watch there. Abby clutches it desperately, holding it over her heart as she cries, and it suddenly feels like a part of him is missing.

It’s too much, all too much, and he needs his friends. He turns on his heel, practically running from the room, his breathing far more laboured than it should be for only a short jog.

The rain is pounding down when he goes outside, soaking him almost instantly, but he doesn’t care. Instead, he runs to the engineering bay, knowing that’s where he’ll find them.

The moment he enters, Raven is there, and he can see the anxious faces of the others - Monty and Miller, wrapped around each other in grief, Jasper, Harper, Monroe. And then Raven’s fists are wound in his drenched jacket and she’s begging, _begging_ him to tell her it’s a lie. She’s crying as she argues with him, reminding him of how this had happened once before, how the Grounder had the watch and Clarke had been perfectly fine in Mount Weather all that time.

“That was almost two years ago, Raven,” he reminds her, his voice is hoarse; he realizes belatedly that it’s not just rain on his face, that there are tears spilling from his eyes as well.

“But Finn was so sure!” she cries. “And I lost him for it. Clarke _killed_ him, Bellamy! And now she’s gone too? _She can’t do this to me! Not again_!” 

“I know,” he whispers, and she slides to the ground, and he goes with her, pulling her tight against him as she sobs into his chest.

When his friends finally fall asleep several hours later, he emerges from the bay, unsure of where to go. The sun is just beginning to rise, and behind Mount Weather, the sky is a chilling shade of red, drenching the valley in blood. 

Bellamy’s exhausted, so exhausted, but he can’t sleep. Not with this grief.

He walks aimlessly around the camp, his boots squelching in the rain-saturated ground, finally retrieving a gun and ordering the guards to open the gate for him. No one challenges him anymore. Not since Mount Weather.

The walk through the woods is slow, but hardly calming. In the long clear, white light of early morning, he sees her golden hair twinkling through the leaves, sees her blue eyes above him where the sky is visible through the branches, sees her dark jacket in the long shadows of the trees.

And he remembers.

_Two years they had been here. Two years since they were sent to Earth to die, one hundred delinquents, tasked with the impossible mission of surviving, trying to forget that they were so expendable to their own people._

_Things had been both great and rocky at the start. The others flocked to his leadership; she did not. She fought him, and they hated each other._

_And then hard choices had to be made, and he had so much more to atone for than her, and when she stepped up to make those decisions, he rarely fought her. Instead, he offered his opinions, solicited or not. But she came to him, and soon he learned that while perhaps they were not precisely friends, they were in this together, co-leaders, protecting the others against a menace they could never have imagined existed._

_And eventually, they grew closer. They depended on one another, needed one another, even as he watched her fall for the peacemaker, for Finn Collins, even as the war drums sounded._

_She had closed the door on them, the boy she loved and the boy she loathed (well, perhaps not anymore), only to be taken later on by the Mountain Men. He remembered what it was like the last time, when they thought she and the forty-seven were dead, how much hope he had, how much faith he put in her. He remembered how Finn had done the same, and had sacrificed his sanity and his life for it._

_He remembered how she walked to Finn through the Grounder camp, on the night that was to make or break the Alliance, how she had slipped Raven’s blade between his ribs, as he had almost expected she would._

_He remembered protecting her, counseling her, offering her his life to save their friends, and her words, so sacred and so far away now. I need you._

_He remembered the hurt when she took it back later, asking him to go into the mountain. He remembered his terror every step of the way, and how when they put the blindfold over his eyes, tortured him, put him in the cage, and finally pulled him from it to drain him of blood, all he saw behind his eyes was her face. As he lost consciousness, dangling there from his ankles, he regretted not telling her, not realizing sooner, just how he felt about her._

_And then her voice when they first spoke over the radio, her relief when they were reunited, even as Lexa was dying from her battle wounds, even as her soul slipped away and called upon Echo to become Commander._

_He remembered her grieving for their friends and their people, for those lost in the missile launch, even for Lexa. He remembered their fight, a week or so afterwards, when he confronted her about how she had just left Octavia, left the others there to die beneath the bomb, and how bitterly she had asked him about his tryst with Echo. When he had come clean, that he had sacrificed himself for her in the mountain and she had saved his life in return, and then what happened later, she had seemed almost jealous._

_He remembered that first winter, how they struggled to survive, even with the assistance of the ever-rockier Alliance. And then spring had come, and it had fallen on him and his past with Echo to hold the Alliance together, and how she seemed just a little resentful of the two of them together. Yet they were truly co-leaders again, both working with Echo because she would see no one else._

_And so it had gone for the year and a half since, through battles with other tribes, through finding the survivors of the other Ark stations, through unforeseen menaces and threats, doing everything as a team._

_Until they didn’t._

_A week ago they had gone out to hunt and were attacked by a tribe who had long been opposed to even Lexa, who were determined to see the Sky People dead and the twelve clans ripped apart._

_There had been an explosion, and he had seen Clarke fly._

_Then he had never seen her again._

Something crunches beneath Bellamy’s boot; it’s the charred remains of a rib, and he shudders in spite of himself, remembering how that had been because of her, too.

The Dropship looks cold and lonely before him, and the longer he spends away from it, the more haunted it seems when he goes back; long has it been since it was teeming with the life of a functioning, if new, society. Instead, it’s full of ghosts; of his comrades who had died there, of the grounders who had been incinerated. He can feel their eyes from the trees, from the bushes, even from the open door of the ship itself, and he wonders if she’s there too.

He’s hesitant to go inside, and glances over his shoulder, suddenly so sure that she’ll be behind him, and so utterly disappointed and heartbroken when she isn’t.

When he goes inside, he finds Octavia, crying into Lincoln’s chest, and his heart breaks a little more. She’s so different now, with her warrior tattoos and her scars and her weapons, and she’s stronger than ever, yet suddenly she looks once more like the little girl hiding beneath the floor on the Ark.  

She throws herself at him, and cries and cries and cries. Once again, their family has been ripped apart.

That bitter taste is still in his mouth, has been all night. It tastes like acceptance.

_Clarke is dead._

*

 _ii._  

Echo comes to Camp Jaha to offer her condolences, to help them organize a funeral fit for a queen. She comes to him, offers him comforting words, gazes at him so perceptively that suddenly he’s sure she knows, understands why his feelings for her were never deep. But then again, neither were hers. 

Despite their peoples’ complicated history, Clarke had been well respected - even liked - by many of the Tree People. Her strength, her ingenuity, had won them over. She was a natural leader.

So they build the pyre, the two groups of people who are so different, yet so familiar now.

Bellamy would have done it all on his own, but the others would never let him. She meant too much to them all for him to do it on his own. He both resents and prides her for it.

Echo stands next to him in front of the pyre, hands him the torch to light it. He hands it off to Abby, knowing that she would never forgive him if she didn’t get to light it, to have some sort of control over things for _once_.

She may be Chancellor, but now he’s the one in charge. Echo’s made that clear.

There’s no body to burn, so they use some of her old clothes, things that are too worn or just too _Clarke_ to be redistributed. The fire consumes the items like a promise, though Bellamy isn’t sure what that promise is.

Vengeance, perhaps. Or maybe just closure. 

Abby stands there, her face like stone, her hand gently toying with the watch on her opposite wrist. Kane stands next to her, close to her, but not touching her. She would not allow it; the time for weakness is over.

Griffin women do not take grief passively. This, Bellamy knows well. It almost makes him laugh, how alike mother and daughter are. _Were_.

*

 _iii._  

A gentle, rhythmic rushing permeates everything, and in a lot of ways it’s both familiar and foreign all at once. Perhaps it’s a lullaby mothers sing to their children on the Ark; perhaps it’s older, from a movie or a song in the archives of the ship, something that was from The Time Before.

It floats in and out of her dreams and nightmares alike, capturing her between sleep and consciousness. Sometimes it’s stronger than other times, sometimes it seems faster, but it’s always there’s. A rush, a moment’s pause, a rush, a moment’s pause, on and on and on and on.

It’s calming when she can hear it, when she actively recognizes it, and steady when she’s lost in oblivion.

She grabs at it in her mind, tries to hold on, often losing the battle. She doesn’t know how long she tries, doesn’t really know anything anymore, but one day, she holds the sound in her head, unwilling to let go.

She listens for a long while, and although it seems far off at first, she becomes aware of the tinkling and chiming, lots of it, and as she fights to regain consciousness, she hangs on to that too.

Eventually, she regains her other senses; the air is salty and the breeze is warm and wet and every time it blows, there’s that nearby chiming.

And then her eyes are open, and what at first is blurry slowly sharpens to odd items dangling from the ceiling: woven nets, some of which have been braided to hold colored glass orbs, as well as shells, lanterns, dried plants, and other things she can’t identify.

The room is rather small, and the furniture is made from an odd-looking wood. That rushing noise is still there, never stopping, and her heart flutters with excitement.

 _The sea_ , she realizes as she tries to pull herself up, before dropping back down from the pain.

A woman hurries to her side, then, scolding her in a language she doesn’t recognize.

The woman then switches to English; her name is Salacia, she says, and her accent is thick and quite unlike that of the Tree People she has gotten to know so well.

Salacia explains that there was an explosion during a battle, that in the chaos afterwards, she was taken by the enemy, and that one of the Sea People’s rangers recognized her as the scouts were taking her away and killed them, bringing her here to be healed. Her burns were not severe, but the internal damage from the force of the blast was, and she had only survived on strength and obstinacy alone. 

When she asks about her watch, the healer only shrugs, remarking that she did not arrive with any watch. Salacia undoes the wrappings, checks the wounds, rewraps them in fresh bandages.

“Where am I?” she finally asks when Salacia has fallen silent.

Salacia smiles warmly, propping her up just enough to force a bitter tea down her throat before she can fight back. She doesn’t trust this woman, but her wits are dulled enough from the injuries, from the sleep. She wants to ask how long she’s been sleeping, about her friends, if anyone else is there with her, but she’s falling quickly into unconsciousness again, and the words fade from her tongue before she can enunciate them.

Just before she gives into oblivion, she hears Salacia’s answer, whispered like a prayer into the sea.

 _Clarke of the Sky People, this is Halcyon_. 

*

_iv._

At first, Salacia keeps her confined to her bed. But soon, she helps her up. 

It’s slow going at first; Clarke is certain she has a few broken ribs and several more bruised, as well as other internal injuries that cause her pain. There’s a slight burn healing on her arm, and Salacia assures her that it shouldn’t scar - she says that it isn’t much worse than a bad burn from the sun. Clarke can’t tell if she’s lying or not, but she doesn’t care. She has worse scars than this one.

Then one day, she’s allowed outside.

The first time she sees the sea in person, she can’t quite catch her breath. It’s almost like being in space, she thinks, to be so small, so _insignificant_ , in the face of something so incomprehensibly huge. The waves are gentle, rolling, rushing in and out and in and out.

She touches the foam with reverence, hesitant to waste her first experience of _seawater_. It’s cold, and it’s powerful, and it’s unlike anything she’s ever experienced.

Water, of course, is nothing new. But the sea, with its endless blue horizon that seems to melt into the sky, and its salty spray, and laughing gulls, is almost spiritual in its affect on her. 

Laughing, Clarke lifts the skirts of the garments given to her - a simple dress just like Salacia’s own, made of a course material she can’t identify - and tentatively steps into the water.

Like a child, she squeals, delighted, and wades in a bit more, wishing she could swim. Salacia calls out a warning, but otherwise leaves her alone.

She understands, then, why they call it Halcyon; it’s a halcyon life here, among these people, with their small homes made of driftwood and decorated with shells and sea glass.

The Sea People are calm and quiet and laid back, quite unlike the Tree People that she has gotten to know so well. They are kind and welcoming, and she is entranced by them. Whereas the Tree People are warriors, these are very nearly vagrants, with their sunkissed skin, and elegant tattoos that seem to ebb and flow like the tides of the sea, and their hair in tight, long knots they call “dreadlocks,” woven with seaweed and dried sea stars. They wear jewelry made of sea glass and bits of coral, and clothes that are woven out of the same soft materials they use to make their nets.

Salacia laughs when Clarke makes the comparison over a dinner of fresh fish and seafood, and agrees; she used to live among the Tree People, she explains. It’s where she learned English. The others laugh as well when she translates.

Each day, Clarke grows stronger, and she is content. The younger ones teach her to swim, and she teaches their healers about some of her methods. She watches them paddle into the waves on long, wooden boards, surfing on the waves when the swells are big enough. She helps them catch food, and learns how to quickly and efficiently clean what they catch, and how best to cook it. At night, the stars are bright and numerous and beautiful above them, sometimes reflecting with the moon on the calm ripples of the sea, and it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. In the back of her mind, she knows who she would like to share it with, but she pushes those thoughts down.

In Halcyon, there is no constant stress, no threat of death. Of course, the Sea People are warriors as well as children of the sea, but she isn’t expected to carry the world on her shoulders here. In fact, none of them do; not even their chief. He’s as laid back as any of them, and she’s witnessed him passing the mornings and the evenings - never the middle of the day, when the sun’s rays are at their most dangerous - sitting on his board, bobbing up and down as the swells roll below him.

It’s nearly a month, she estimates (though she can’t be sure), before she experiences her first sea storm. The winds are strong off the water and they rip at the huts and the waters rise and she stands at the top of the dunes before the worst of it with Salacia, watching in awe as the waves grow three times the size that she’s seen them yet, and pound angrily at the shore. Streaks of lightning flash across the sky, and in their light she can see the water churning where just hours before it was so calm; whitecaps where earlier there were gentle, rolling swells.

In the hut, the windows have been shuttered tightly, and anything that might blow away in the storm has been brought inside, including the wind chimes she has come to love so. Salacia tells her stories, of mermaids, of kelpies, of nereids. She tells her of Ceto and Leviathan and Poseidon and the sirens, and Clarke can’t help but think how much Bellamy would love this.

And the guilt strikes her then, hard and fast and severe, because she’s been here for weeks, and no one at home even knows it. She’s all but forgotten her own people, the ones she was meant to love; they must believe she’s dead. She wants to cry, wants to scream and rage and challenge the storm that surely is a punishment, but she doesn’t. She is stronger than any wind, and she will go home on her own terms, not just because the sea is trying to blow her there.  

When she goes to bed that night, the wind blasts around the hut and the waves strike the sand like an accusation, and behind her eyelids she sees freckles and obsidian eyes.

*

 _v._  

Clarke sets off when the storm has passed and the damage is cleared. It’s not too extensive; the storm wasn’t bad, Salacia says, and the clan has lived in this spot for decades, protected by the dunes and the old trees.

Leaving is bittersweet. Salacia gives her provisions, hugs her, sends her off with one of the warriors for protection and a long knife tucked in her belt. It’s hard to leave the sea; it has become home, in a way, a place of respite and peace, a place without stress. But she feels guilty for it, for not leaving sooner, for _forgetting_ the people she is supposed to be defending.

It takes three days and two nights to make it to the edge of the Tree People’s territory. At night, she and the warrior, Dilan, make camp. They try to converse, but Salacia speaks the best English of the entire clan, and their efforts are mostly for naught.

It leaves Clarke too much time to think, and her anxiety returns, stronger and stronger the further away they get from the healing, calming waves of the sea.

 _They’ll be angry_ , she thinks. _Bellamy will be angry_.

She’s missed them all, but part of her had been inclined to stay in Halcyon, to let them think she was dead and move on without her. But that was selfish, she knew, and cruel. 

The sea would always be there, as would her friendship with Salacia and the Sea People. It was time to go home, to face whatever challenges presented themselves, to take her place back at the top as a leader, with her mother and Kane and Bellamy.

She knew she should be excited, especially to see her mother and her friends, but it was with apprehension that she approached the territory of the Tree People, and as she and Dilan passed the time in companionable silence, she began to worry what Bellamy would have to say.

The others would forgive her. Abby would just be ecstatic that she was alive, and Raven and Kane and her friends would accept her explanation that she had been kidnapped by the outlanders, then rescued by the Sea People, and that she had needed time to heal before she could make the journey home.

Bellamy would not be the same. She wouldn’t be surprised if he refused to speak to her, gave her the cold shoulder for not managing to scrounge up a radio or set off a smoke signal or find some other ridiculous way to let her people know she was alive.

Ever since Mount Weather, he had been oddly protective, oddly close, even when they fought, even when he was involved with Echo.

She remembered when he told her, after Echo was called to command, and how he had tried to play it off so casually. _We saved each other, we were involved, now we’re not, but she trusts me, and she trusts you because I do. We’ll all be fine with her as Commander_.

His logic was sound, but even now she can taste the acridness on her tongue. She refused then to admit that it was jealousy, but now that so much time has passed and she’s had time to willingly reflect, to try to understand, she understands that that’s _exactly_ what it was.

Dilan leaves her when they reach the edge of his people’s territory, and Clarke makes the rest of the journey alone. It takes her another day of following his map before she begins to recognize things, and even though it’s a little bit out of the way, since she’s not as excited as she is tentative for her return to Camp Jaha, she goes by way of the Dropship.

It’s just like it was the last time she was there, only more grass has grown, and the trees that were burnt in the blastoff have given way to smaller sprouts in their place.

 _Life goes on_. 

She sits on the hinge of the giant door, dangling her feet over the side, sipping her water and contemplating her return. There’s nothing to do but walk in the front gate; even though the camp has grown significantly since it was first established, there is still only one gate. Everyone will see her. Everyone will know she’s been alive all this time.

She doesn’t stay at the Dropship for too long. Ever since they permanently vacated it, it had felt haunted. Even now, Clarke could hear the whispers in the rustling leaves, the accusations on the wind. She had failed them all, even the Grounders who had died here. They all knew it, and now they were reminding her of it.

So she sets off, and it’s twilight now, and the moon is big and round and bright in the sky. She had watched the last full moon rise over the sea, and a new wave of guilt washed over her. Exactly how long has she been gone?

By the time she makes it to the gates, it’s completely dark. They see her coming, but they obviously can’t tell who it is. The gates swing open anyway; they haven’t really needed to vet just a single traveler since Mount Weather.

It’s Miller who spots her as she’s walking through; he was manning the gate, apparently, and he cries out her name and sweeps her into his arms before she even knows what’s happening.

Others must see or hear the commotion, because before long she’s surrounded by a group of her friends, and it’s all hugs and questions and she’s promising her explanations _later_. Raven comes running through, then, and the crowd parts for her, and Clarke has never been hugged so hard in her life, and the mechanic is crying into her salty hair. Some of her nerves dissipate after that, as Raven links their arms together and guides her through the sea of people and into the Ark.

The walk back to the Council Chambers is like the walk to her reckoning, and Clarke’s heart is barely beating as she enters, Raven at her side, as Kane stares in disbelief, and Abby turns around and just _melts_. And then she’s holding Clarke’s face and inspecting her and _sobbing_ and hugging her and Clarke is so relieved, and so surprised, because she thought she would have to fight for forgiveness.

The trek back to Bellamy’s grounder-style hut is one she does on her own, after Raven offers to provide a well-timed diversion for her, implying that apparently she and her “knight,” as Raven calls him, deserve some alone time to _talk_. The whole way her friend phrases everything makes her uneasy, but she knows she needs to face him _now_.  

She reaches his familiar door, and her stomach is fluttering and she stands there for a moment, unsure exactly _why_ it is that she’s so nervous and wishing she knew. But she steels herself, then knocks on the door and waits for him to invite her in.

When she enters, he isn’t facing her, but is instead bent over a table in the center of the hut, several candles and lanterns illuminating the room, studying a map of some sort.

“ _Bellamy_ ,” she whispers, and he freezes where he is for a long moment. Then he’s shaking his head and a trembling hand comes up to rub his eyes and she takes a step closer to him.

“Bellamy,” she says again, stronger this time, and this time he whirls around, and her breath catches in her throat. 

He looks tired and worn and alarmed, and his obsidian eyes, sparkling in the candlelight, are staring at her as though she’s a ghost.

His face twists then, and she’s caught up in his arms and he holds her so tightly she can hardly breathe, but she doesn’t care. Her own arms snake around his neck and she buries her face in him and breathes him in and this is what she _missed_ , this is what she needed to feel at home again. When she feels him press a kiss to the top of her head, a warmth spreads through her, and she knows she’s forgiven without asking, without explaining.  

When he pulls away, his hands go to her face, as if he’s afraid that she’ll vanish if he stops touching her. He’s inspecting her, smiling, looking so purely happy, and she’s not sure she’s ever seen a more beautiful sight, not even the sea. 

“You smell like salt,” he whispers, voice breaking as he speaks. 

Clarke smiles back, leaning ever so slightly into the hand that’s caressing her cheek. “I was recovering at the sea,” she replies, knowing there will be time later for longer explanations and more purposeful conversations.

She grasps his wrist, and he catches sight of her father’s watch; Abby had gladly returned it before she had left to find Bellamy.

“You were dead,” he murmurs desolately, and there’s an edge of something slightly angry in his voice, and she can’t blame him.

“I know, I’m _so_ sorry. I’ll explain everything….”

But he just hugs her again, and she’s grateful, and overwhelmed. When the novelty wears off, she knows there will be questions and explanations, and probably a little more of that anger from him, but for now, Clarke doesn’t care.

For now, she is content to just stand there in Bellamy’s arms, her head on his chest and his chin propped on her head and his hands rubbing small circles on her back. For now, she will enjoy whatever it is that seems to be starting between them. For now, she just wants to be near him, with him, and she knows for damn sure that the next time she goes to the sea, it’ll with him by her side.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first [completed] Bellarke fic, as I am rather new to the 100 fandom. 
> 
> The character Echo is actually the grounder princess from the episode where Bellamy is in the cage and his blood is being drained. I looked her up. 
> 
> "Salacia" is the name of a mythical Roman goddess of salt water and it means "salt."  
> "Dilan" means "sea" in Welsh.  
> (via 20-000names.com)
> 
> Thanks for reading! Don't be afraid to comment, or to drop by and say hello.


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